HAGIOGRAPHY AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS: THE CASE OF SANT BEUNO OF WALES KAREN STÖBER UNIVERSITAT DE LLEIDA SPAIN Date of receipt: 2nd of January, 2019 Final date of acceptance: 6th of May, 2019 ABSTRACT This article looks at ways in which the political situation in medieval Wales was reflected in the writings of native authors, and in particular in the medieval Welsh hagiography. It discusses how native Welsh saints were used, on the one hand, as tools of propaganda and portrayed as defenders and protectors of their land in the face of the foreign, English adversary, and on the other, how they served to promote and justify the native Welsh church and emphasise its antiquity and its primacy vis-à-vis the advancing Anglo-Norman church. Focusing on one popular figure among the multitude of Welsh saints, the case of Saint Beuno, who is little-known outside Wales, the article then explores the ways in which this holy man’s vita was constructed and used as a ‘nationalist’ device, tying it in with other examples of ‘nationalist’ Welsh literature composed during times of political crises. 1 KEYWORDS Wales, Saint Beuno, hagiography, propaganda, England. CAPITALIA VERBA Wallia, Sanctus Bonus, Hagiographia, propaganda, Anglia. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XIII (2019): 41-54 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2019.13.02 41 42 KAREN STÖBER 1Wales in the Middle Ages was a region characterized as much by its political fragmentation as by the multitude of its saints, and this paper aims to demonstrate how both of these aspects are indeed closely related. This is a topic that has long generated interest among scholars of medieval Wales, and was addressed particularly well a decade and a half ago by some of the contributors to Jane Cartwright’s superb volume on Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults, notably Elissa Henken, Nerys Ann Jones and Morfydd Owen, J. Wyn Evans, and Jane Cartwright.2 The present article looks at just a couple of examples to further illustrate the relation between hagiography and politics in medieval Wales. It takes as its focus the vita of the popular Welsh saint Beuno, whose cult is, however, little-known outside Wales. St Beuno’s Life is used here to exemplify a series of observations regarding the ways in which the written culture of the country mirrors the political events of the later Middle Ages on the one hand, and represents a reaction to the impact of the Norman Conquest on the native Welsh church on the other. 1. The medieval kingdoms of Wales Throughout almost the entire medieval period, the political history of Wales was marked by the rivalry between its small kingdoms, a rivalry that was played out especially between the northern, the southern and the eastern regions of Wales in the kingdoms of Gwynedd, Deheubarth and Powys.3 The power balance among these three principal kingdoms was periodically changing and being redefined throughout the Middle Ages, alternating between the growth of one or other kingdom through conquest, and the reduction of the same, following the division of kingdoms between heirs, sometimes several of them. Thus it was in the thirteenth century, under the northern Welsh prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd (d. 1240), known as Llywelyn Fawr (the Great), who extended his territories to the south and east and at some point referred to himself as dominus Wallie,4 that medieval Wales came perhaps closest to something approaching political unity and achieved its widest territorial expansion.5 1. This paper was written within the framework of the research project Expresividad, sentimiento y emoción (s. XII-XV) (HAR 2016-75028-P), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity. 2. Cartwright, Jane, ed. Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003. 3. On the political formation of medieval Wales, see for example Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991: 24-81; Carpenter, David. The Struggle for Mastery. The Penguin History of Britain 1066-1284. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004: 164-167, 186-188, 300-327, 382- 386; Turvey, Roger. The Welsh Princes, 1063-1283. London: Longman, 2002. 4. Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest...: 246. Llywelyn had already used the title tocius norwallie princeps (“prince of the whole of north Wales”) as early as 1199: Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest...: 239. 5. On Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, note especially Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest... and Carr, A.D. Medieval Wales. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995: 54-60. IIMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XIII (2019): 41-54 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2019.13.02 HAGIOGRAPHY AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS: THE CASE OF SANT BEUNO OF WALES 43 And it was under the rule of his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (d.1282), who succeeded in partially reuniting the lands of his grandfather,6 which had been divided between himself and his brother Owain, that comparative calm was temporarily re- established in the region. The Welsh Chronicle of the Princes (Brut y Tywysogyon) notes under the year 1264, “that year the Welsh lived in peace with the English, with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd prince over all Wales”.7 But Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, as well as reasserting Gwynedd’s position as the predominant Welsh kingdom, and in part on account of his territorial supremacy in the region, had a difficult relationship with the English crown, like many Welsh rulers before him.8 In his case, however, his repeated confrontation with Edward I of England was to have grave and lasting consequences, both for himself, and for Wales. By 1282 Edward I had mounted an unrestrained military campaign into Wales that led to the defeat and death of Llywelyn and the loss of Wales’s independence. The administration of the country was taken into the hands of English royal officials. Edward’s military conquest was accompanied by a large-scale building programme in the north and west of Wales that resulted in the erection of such magnificent structures as the castles of Harlech, Caernarfon, Conwy, and Beaumaris, all still visible and still impressive to this day, and standing as visual reminders of the supremacy —or, as has been argued, of the struggle of asserting its authority— of the late-thirteenth-century English crown in its newly-conquered territories.9 The impact of Edward I’s conquest of Wales was to have a long-lasting effect on the land and its people, not only in practical terms on the administration and political supervision of the country, but also on the sense of the political and social identity of its people. 2. Politics and literary production in medieval Wales What is notable during this time of political upheaval and external government of Wales by the English crown, combined with the uneasiness and discomfort caused by the war, is the (sometimes overt) anti-English sentiment among part of the Welsh population, expressed both in the native literature of the time and visible in the Welsh chronicles and in the formal documentation concerning the region.10 It is striking 6. Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest...: 309. On Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, see also Carr, A.D. Medieval Wales...: 62-66. 7. Brut y Tywysogyon, or The Chronicle of the Princes. Red Book of Hergest version, ed. Thomas Jones. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955: 255. 8. On the delicate relationships between Welsh princes and English kings, see for example Davies, R.R. The Age of Conquest...: 289-330. 9. Morris, John Edward. The Welsh Wars of Edward I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901; Pounds, N.J.G. The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: A Social and Political History. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 1990. 10. The most famous of the Welsh chronicles is the Brut y Tywysogyon or Chronicle of the Princes. On the formal documentation, see for example the Calendar of Ancient Petitions relating to Wales, ed. William Rees. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975. For a sense of the administration of Wales by the English crown, note also IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XIII (2019): 41-54 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2019.13.02 44 KAREN STÖBER how times of political crises tended to be reflected in the literature of Wales: we might consider the revival of Welsh folk heroes from bygone centuries, or the increased literary production in the Welsh language in the fourteenth century, to represent a direct reaction to the current political circumstances.11 Rees Davies reminds us that “in a past-dominated society, historical lore was also a political statement”.12 And what stands out among this lively literary production are, on the one hand, the creation of vitae of native and local saints, as well as the translation from Latin into the Welsh language of vitae of saints, including two Welsh saints; and on the other hand, the great quantity of Welsh poetry composed during this period. Both could be decidedly political, even outright hostile in tone against the unwelcome English presence in the country. Thus the fourteenth-century bard Dafydd ap Gwilym, perhaps the best- known of all the medieval Welsh poets, speaks in one of his poems dismissively of drisais mewn gwely drewsawr (“three Englishmen in a stinking bed”).13 In one sense, then, we need to consider the production of the Welsh vitae as a reaction, at least in part, to the country’s political circumstances, and in this sense as elements of propaganda for Welsh supremacy. Simultaneously in this context we need to take into account also the role of the church and its promotion of the native saints’ cults, and in order to do so we ought to look back as far as the eleventh century and the arrival of the Normans in Wales, and the great impact this event had on the Welsh church.14 3.